How FBI brought down cyber-underworld site Silk Road

12:45 AM,
Oct. 22, 2013

This artist rendering shows Ross William Ulbricht appearing in Federal Court in San Francisco on Friday, Oct. 4, 2013. A federal judge in San Francisco has postponed the bail hearing for Ulbricht who is being charged as the mastermind of Silk Road, an encrypted website where users could shop for drugs like heroin and LSD anonymously.

Written by

Donna Leinwand Leger
USA TODAY

Criminals who prowl the cyber-underworld's "darknet" thought law enforcement couldn't crack their anonymous trade in illegal drugs, guns and porn. But a series of arrests this month, including the bust of the black market site Silk Road, shows the G-men have infiltrated the Internet's back alley.

Computer experts suspect the government simply beat the cyber-pirates at their own game: hacking.

The Silk Road website, which has a customer-friendly electronic storefront that displayed bricks of cocaine as deftly as Amazon displays books, was the cyber-underworld's largest black ...